I’ve been debating back and forth (with myself) on the subject of screen protectors. I have a Droid X and for the first 18 months I was using the carbon fiber case and screen protectors. After removing my phone from the case so many times to do a battery pull or something like that, my case finally broke one of the tabs and wouldn’t stay on. I did away with it all together. And after removing the case and the phone was so clean, I decided to remove my old beat-up screen protector too.

I have been caseless and protectorless for approx 5 months and despite semi-rugged use, the phone and screen show no wear. I was curious how many people don’t use either or both of these, what kind of abuse your phone puts up with, and if you would suggest it to others?

About Me: I take care of any and all electronics. I have a desk job 40 hours a week but also rock climb 3 times a week and my phone accompanies me. Coffee has been spilled on it and it has been dropped in cake icing (both by others) and I’m not sure how much to attribute to the case and protector.

Input would be very usefull being that I am due for an upgrade in the coming month/s.

If I drop it, that probably means I’m falling ;) Just kidding. I was thinking of a rugged case with either a carabiner clip or a strap to hold it to my chalk back. I love taking panoramic/HDR pictures at the top with it.

I’ve tried cases on my phones before. While I like the protection it provides, it just makes the phone so much bigger – doubles the thickness sometimes!

I have a Galaxy S II and have dropped it several times. The only visible damage is a small ding when it fell down a flight of stairs onto concrete. I don’t go with a case or screen protector and recognize that if something catastrophic happens to my phone, I’ll just have to get another one.

I hate covering my phone up, however I prefer to keep my device safe.
Since I rarely drop my devices(in my two years of using the g1 I never dropped it, still no drops on my S2 :P ) I usually go for the thinnest and lightest case with a screen protector.

I ride my bike a lot (10-20 hours a week) so I like having my phone in a case. I know I crashed last year and the phone I had at the time was not in a case and it did damage it. I now have an OtterBox case and while it is bigger the protection is great and with the screen protector built in it is not hard to deal with. I have a Droid X2 so I know what you mean about pulling the battery. However since I installed CM7 I have only had to pull the battery once in about 4 months. Before that battery pulls were pretty much 2-4 times a month. That was annoying.

In the five years of owning a smartphone (wow it feels weird that it’s been that long already), I’ve never used a case or screen protector. I used to work at Apple and show people on my personal phone just how hard it is to scratch a screen (I would take my keys out and try to scratch the screen repeatedly). Having switched over to Android, the quality of screens doesn’t seem to have changed. Cases for iPhone are more common since those things tend to destroy themselves if you drop them, but I’ve found Android phones to be much lighter and therefore the damaged received from a drop isn’t nearly as bad. So, I will continue to not use cases or screen protectors, but that’s just me.

Thanks for all the comments. My cousin works flipping houses and doesn’t have a case or a protector on his Incredible and its still in moderately good condition. It is def reassuring to hear all the other experiences people have.

I agree with Seaps, I never see Androids with broken screens and yet I know about 20 people that have broken their iPhone screens because despite Gorilla Glass, they are still brittle.

I try to be as carefull as I can. So for me I won’t use much screen protection. Besides I can never get that stuff applied perfectly without bubbles by myself and I don’t want to spend the money to have the mall kiosk guy do it.

But my daughter. That’s another story. She shattered her iPod’s screen by dropping it. It cost me half the cost of the original to replace the entire unit. I took the replacement iPod and had them protective wrap it and then another protective case over that. Now if she drops it, it should bounce.